Memory consumption

[ZcommeDodo]

Hello,

I manage softwares installed in a few schools and my direction decided to give up PhotoShop for budget purpose.

We now use Paint.net instead with psd plugin. A server Citrix distributes the application to light terminals. Everything works well until some students start to work with 'large files' (over 40MB). Then things got worse since the memory usage was about 1GB per instance of Paint.net !

We then thought there could be a problem with the picture : we opened it with TheGIMP, and the memory consumption was only 150MB.

1GB RAM shouldn't be a problem in a "heavy client" architecture, but we can't afford letting the Citrix server manage 30 clients using Paint.net simultaneously.

I am afraid this problem is more a matter of Framework.net (and memory management) than a problem with Paint.net itself.

Is there any way of making things in RAM "smaller" using Paint.net ?

Thanks in advance.

ZcD

[Bob]

Pictures in memory are treated in the pixel sense and not compressed.

So, to compute the memory requirements for an image, the following formula can be used:

(W × H × 4) × (L + 2)

W = Width; H = Height; L = Number of layers.

× 4 for 1 byte for color & alpha per pixel and + 2 for the composition buffers.

So the file size (in bytes) is not really important, but I assume this is really large images (>10000px²?).

The only solution is what IIRC Photoshop does, swapping itself image parts on the hard disk.

Last time this question was asked the answer was No, cause it's clearly a lot of work. PdN is not made to be used "professionally"¹, i.e. with large images.

¹

If you really need good software for working with images for printing, or need to work at a professional level, then I must honestly point you towards Adobe Photoshop.

PS: I'm just curious, in which "schools" did you work? Medicine ones?

[ZcommeDodo]

Thanks for your answer Bob. I was afraid of getting such an answer.

Students are teenagers learning drawing on computers with their teacher. We can't really call that a "professional" usage.

But now I understood that we have to keep in mind that .net applications might need a lot of memory (too much ?) and shouldn't be distributed through a Citrix architecture.

ZcD

[Rick Brewster]

This is a result of Paint.NET's architecture/design, and is NOT a .NET Framework issue.

[Rick Brewster]

This really belongs in the troubleshooting section.

Moved to Bugs & Troubleshooting